Fifteen and Dying
by blackbeltchic
Summary: At the age of fifteen, Buffy Summers was told she might not live to see her sixteenth birthday. Now, over ten years later, she is telling her story so that the next generation of slayers might take strength from it.
1. Introduction

**Title**: Fifteen and Dying

**Author**: Karen

**Disclaimer**: I do not own the characters, they belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.

**Summary**: At the age of fifteen, Buffy Summers was told she might not live to see her sixteenth birthday. Now, over ten years later, she is telling her story so that the next generation of slayers might take strength from it.

**Author's** **Notes**: I don't know yet if I'm going to continue this story. First person is still a point of view that is hard for me, so the going is slow.

**Spoilers**: All seasons, and a bit from the movie as well.

**Distribution**: Here, for right now. If you want it, please ask first.

**Feedback**: A must.

* * *

Working Title: Fifteen and Dying

Introduction

Okay, before we go any farther, don't think that this is one of those books about the heroine getting cancer or AIDs and dying at the end, because that isn't what this is. First confession: I used to enjoy those books when I was younger, when I wasn't out with friends, or shopping or at school or cheerleading practice, I would read those books. You know the kinds, like _Time to Say Goodbye, _or _Don't Let Me Die,_ books where the main character is nice and a great person, and then they find out they have leukemia or some other form of cancer, and they go through treatment and all that pain and lose their hair only to go into remission and later come out of remission and die.

What this is, is my story. It wasn't my idea. It was Giles. I guess I've become something of a celebrity, dying twice and changing the rules and living and getting demons and darkness more out into the open. There are now tons of girls out there who are now the slayer, when there used to be just one, I bet you're probably one of them, and they're having a hard time adjusting. Giles thought that me being such a big hero, it would help if they knew my story, all the things I went through and survived, that maybe it will help them come to terms with this. I don't know how knowing about all of my faults will help someone else, but what the hell. Here goes. And at the end, you can decide if I'm the hero everyone thinks I am.


	2. Chapter One: That First Year

**Title**: Fifteen and Dying

**Author**: Karen

**Disclaimer**: I do not own the characters, they belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.

**Summary**: At the age of fifteen, Buffy Summers was told she might not live to see her sixteenth birthday. Now, over ten years later, she is telling her story so that the next generation of slayers might take strength from it.

**Author's** **Notes**: I've decided that I am trying for eight chapters, but first person is still a point of view that is hard for me, so the going is slow. Also, Queen Boadicea's review finally got to me, so I changed the last paragraph. She was correct...

**Spoilers**: All seasons, and a bit from the movie as well.

**Distribution**: Here, for right now. If you want it, please ask first.

**Feedback**: A must.

**Chapter One**- That First Year

I first found out I was a slayer when I was fifteen. My first watcher, Merrick, showed up at my high school, in plain daylight, and told me that I had this great destiny, to fight vampires and demons, and ultimately, to die young; that's what it boils down to. It was a few months before my birthday; I was going to be sixteen, and suddenly I might not live to be seventeen. I might not even live to see my sixteenth birthday! I'll admit that I was a spoiled brat back then, designer clothes, cheerleader, popular, Prom princess, the whole nine yards, and this whole slayer thing blew me away. I seriously thought Merrick had escaped from some loony bin or something. I mean, I was destiny free. I actually remember telling Merrick something like that. There I was, short skirt, pink jacket, lollipop, waiting around for my stupid ex-boyfriend to grovel at my feet to take me back. I was only taking him back because I was afraid of going to a stupid dance stag. My biggest concern up to that point was whether I was going to have a date to Spring Fling.

But then I met my first vampire. And I staked my first vampire. On that night, I could never go back to being the person I had been, and you can't either. Whether you knew about demons and magic and all that before you were called or not, you can't go back to being the person you were. I was lost. And that night was the first night I had ever lied to my parents about where I had been. Kinda throws the whole popular image of me out the window doesn't it? Knowing that I was a goody two shoes, that did my homework and was where I was supposed to be. I was incredibly naive.

Then I made my first mistake. Remember, this was over ten years ago, and the world was a different place. I told my parents about being the slayer, and they sent me to an institution to make sure I wasn't crazy. You're not crazy, and neither was I. You have this sacred birthright that no matter what happens, you can't run from it, you can't hide from it.

Though it had never been proved, within a year, my parents got a divorce because of my slaying. It was the last straw that broke the camel's back. Because I wasn't allowed to tell my parents, my sister, or my friends. Suddenly, instead of being popular, I was an outcast. I no longer had time to hang out after school because I had slayer training. I no longer went out on weekend nights because I was patrolling. Suddenly, I was being forced to make up stories about why I wasn't going out, or going the next step, and lying that I had gone out, and where I had gone, and who I'd been with, and what we did. I even got kicked out of school for burning down the gym because of my being a slayer, and I lost Merrick to vampires. But my Mom and my sister and I moved to a small town about two hours away from our LA home.

Now, you're thinking chance to start over, chance to no longer be the slayer, right? That's what I was thinking. But I was wrong. My new watcher was Rupert Giles, the new school librarian. And there were vampires on campus-my first day, a dead boy was found in a gym locker. Two holes in his neck, and strangest of all, his blood had been drained. Welcome to Sunnydale High indeed.

I tried to ignore it, as you are probably doing, but I couldn't. I went to a club my first night; I got followed there, and then Mr. Giles showed up, and vampires took two potential friends. I only saved one, and that's how the "Scooby Gang" started, and I broke my first rule; I had friends who knew about me being a slayer, and they helped me.

Then there was the Harvest, where a vampire formerly known as Henrich Nest, also known as the Master, was going to be released from his prison and open the hellmouth. Oh, did I forget to go over that? Sunnydale used to be known as the Boca Del Inferno, the mouth of hell. The high school was actually built upon this mystical area that could unleash hell on earth. It opened up in the library, also ground zero for all slaying operations.

I kicked his butt that night by killing his vessel-the Master's, that is-and he didn't get enough power to break free. But vampires were just the start. That first 'year' in Sunnydale, the last three months of the school year, we faced a glory day missing witch and a preying mantis substitute teacher and a pack of hyenas that possessed a couple of kids at school and ate the mascot and principal…And then there was the Anointed One, a vampire that was supposed to trick me with his youth and lead me into hell. Then there was a demon that got trapped in a book, and when we scanned the info for Gile's library, it got on the internet and tried to kill me and my friends.

But a few months later, he succeeded in getting free, and he killed me. The Master, again. He drank my blood, and left me to drown. If it weren't for one of my friends, I wouldn't be here right now, I wouldn't be some hero, some legend. I would be like the thousands before me, and just like you're going to be if you don't accept your destiny. Safe to say I kicked his ass, and then went and visited my Dad in LA, tried to reconnect with my old friends, but they would have nothing to do with me, and it was then that I realized that they were fake. No, not fake, just different. They would never have been able to take on the burden I had. That seperated me from them.


	3. Chapter Two: The Second Year, and Angel

**Chapter Two: The Second Year, and Angel**

I guess it's time to admit to another little guilty secret, because it wouldn't be my life if you didn't have all the facts. My first night in Sunnydale, I met this strange, incredibly handsome man who warned me about the hellmouth. For months he popped up with cryptic messages and then vanished. One night, he saved my life, and got hurt in the process. So I bandaged him up, and he spent the night on my bedroom floor- I wasn't about to let him back out on the streets hurt with vampires around. The guilty secret I have to admit to is, I was attracted to him, very attracted to him. And then I found out he was a vampire.

But like everything in my life, it wasn't that cut and dried. He used to be known as Angelus, Scourge of Europe. He was a menace for about a hundred years, and then he got on the wrong side of a gypsy clan, and they cursed him with his human soul. To this day, he remembers every person he killed in those 100 plus years, and he feels guilty about them. So he's now working to atone for his sins, and the way he was doing that was by helping me.

You can guess that we fell in love. He killed his sire to save me, in the vampire world, that's saying something. And it wasn't one of those teenager love things, I'd gone through enough dates with hormonal teenaged boys who's only objective was to get into my pants. Angel was different. For one, he wasn't a teenager, he was like 240, and he didn't have hormones. We took it slow. We didn't do so much dates, but patrolling a cemetery was never so much fun than with him. And we fought like we had known each other our entire lives, instead of ten months. And his kiss was gentle, and sweet, and full of love and caring for me-he had over 240 years of experience in kissing, and it was heavenly. To be totally truthful, he taught me to kiss.

We faced a lot of stuff that year, including two vampires that he used to run with when he was evil, vampires he taught most tricks in the book to. He even sired one of them in the 1800's. You can probably guess where this is going. On my 17th birthday, his child or whatever you want to call her, summoned a demon known as the Judge, no weapon forged can kill him, he can burn the humanity out of people with a glance. Angel almost went away that night, and later on, after doing some reconnaissance, we both almost died, and it was pouring, and we were soaked and I was cold – cold doesn't really bother him - and his apartment was closest…and we made love.

In retrospect, trying to be all adult and responsible, not something I'm proud of, and not something I'd endorse, but that's the truth. And in those few hours, he was just as gentle and sweet as he had always been, and God, the experience he has…He never did anything or touched me anywhere without silently asking my permission with his dark, expressive eyes. And I don't regret it. He is the only person I've ever made love with and he's my soul mate- even after all these years, I still believe that. I know that we can't be together, but I know that we're still destined to be in love, just as I'm destined to be alone. But we'll get to that later…

And it was then that we found out about a clause in his curse-one moment of true happiness, a moment where the memory of those that he killed no longer weighed upon him, and his soul would be taken away from him. Guess what? Having sex with me gave him that happiness; I guess he was thinking more about lavishing attention on my body than all the people he killed. He reverted to his alter evil ego, and started killing people, including one of my friends.

On an off note, got to say that I'm the only one who has ever given him his moment of true happiness, and the jealous little bitch inside of me is proud of that fact.

You know the feeling when you're on a roller coaster, right as you go over that edge, when your stomach drops? Five months of that, only worse. He was a monster because of me, my actions, and he let me know it. It was like the worst day you've ever had, compounded with your dog dying, your favorite grandmother dying, and your parents getting divorced. Only it went on for five months, as he stalked me and taunted me and sat by my bed at night and drew pictures of me sleeping and tortured my friends, and killed people as gifts for me, and killed a teacher, and tried to end the world. Just because he could, and it was my fault.

We're all still here, so obviously he didn't succeed. I stopped him, because that's what we have to do, we stop the bad guys from ending the world. Doesn't matter if that bad guy is your mother, your brother, your best friend, or your lover. It's something I didn't want to admit, but the world, and the six billion plus people, come before your feelings, your pain. We're slayers, that's what we do.

So we fought. Swords clanging against each other, I remember jumping off small ledges, ect…And that was when he taught me something that has kept me alive all these years. I even remember his exact words, "Now that's everything, huh? No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all that away…and what's left?" They can't take everything away from you. Even when it seems like everything is gone, you always have yourself.

So here comes the turn of the battle. He had knocked away my sword, but I managed to turn the tide anyway. We're fighting, and I've got the upper hand, just as my best friend completed the curse to give him back his soul. But the damage was already done. He found this demon that could suck the world into hell, and before the curse went into effect, he awakened said demon. The portal to suck the whole world into hell was open, and the only way to close it was to send him to hell. And the worst part was, he was his old, souled, self. He was worried about the cut on my arm, and he hugged me, saying that it felt like he hadn't seen me in months, and everything was muddled. He didn't remember a single thing that he had done, all the people he had killed. He hadn't remembered yet. And I had to send him to hell. I would have given up everything I had to be with him, I loved him more than anything in this life, and I put a sword through his heart because I had to.

The bad just keeps on coming.

You might not understand my rational. I had to smash my heart to save the world, because that's what a slayer does. She gives everything she has, she gives up everything she owns, to save the world. But I hadn't realized that yet. Once you understand, things become easier. I didn't understand that yet, so I suffered.

Add to that a massive fight I had with my mother-I finally told her, after over two years of fighting and slaying, that I was a slayer, so soon after Angelus told her that we had slept together…I really don't know how she hadn't suspected something was up before, after washing blood out of my clothes all the time, I don't know how she couldn't believe. But she was drunk, and she didn't believe me, and she forbid me to go out and save the world for the umpteenth time. And she told me not to bother coming home. I had already been expelled from school due to a friend's murder, blamed on me, and I had just sent the love of my life to hell, so I ran away.

I ended up going back to LA. I got a small apartment, and a job waiting tables-the first job I had ever had. And when I wasn't working, I was crying, and feeling sorry about myself, and missing my friends and my mother, and mostly Angel. And I was thinking about suicide. When you think you have nothing left in the world, the world doesn't seem such a friendly place. Without Angel, I wasn't interested in living in this world anymore. You're young yet, you probably don't understand my rational, my thinking, but someday you will. Some day you will meet The One. The person you want to spend the rest of your life with, the person that makes the world disappear, the lights dim around you, and when you kiss, there's the 100 piece orchestra hiding somewhere in the bushes, and you know if you were to die right then, you would be content. It doesn't have to be a fairy tale, it doesn't even truly have to make sense- Angel was, and still is, the one thing in my freaky life that makes sense.

But I was seventeen. I had met that person, and he was gone.

After a summer of ignoring my duties, a homeless girl that had known me in Sunnydale needed my help, and I saved her life, and hundreds of other people's lives. And that was when I realized that my life wasn't my own. It wasn't my right to be able to mope about lost love. I was the one girl in the whole world who had the strength and skill to fight demons, and to save people from things they didn't know existed. I couldn't ignore my duties, my destiny, so I went back to Sunnydale, went back to my friends and family, and started my senior year in high school. 


	4. Chapter Three: Senioritis, Slayerfest

Chapter Three: Senioritis, Slayerfest…

Back in Sunnydale, I knew I couldn't live with myself until I said goodbye to Angel and tried to go on with my life, so that's what I did. He had given me a promise ring for my birthday, and I went to the mansion he had been living in, the last place I had seen him, and said goodbye, leaving the ring on the floor where he had last stood. Saying goodbye didn't really help, but I convinced myself it did, it made me able to sleep through most of the night.

I started dating this great guy named Scott, but a few days after saying my goodbyes, I ran into someone in the woods. And it was Him. Angel. The demon inside him deemed me a threat. And- And he had blood around his mouth. He wasn't in vamp face, but strangely enough I remember that more than I remember what I was wearing, or what day of the week it was. It was the first time I was ever afraid of Angel. I had to knock him out. It brought all the old pain I thought I had locked up in LA...

So I took him to his old place- well, Angelus's, this nice mansion, and the previous owners left some chains…they were vampires, after all...so I locked him up. Because at that point, a kid had been killed, mauled by a wild animal. And Angel was acting like an animal. I couldn't let it be him. But at the same time, my best friend's boyfriend was a werewolf, so we were hoping it wasn't him either, because it was that time of the month...

But when I locked him up, I couldn't get through to him. And then I noticed the scorch marks on the marble floor. It was in the shape of a large body.

But that wasn't the only freaky thing that was going on. Oh, I forgot to mention Kendra. The year before, when the Order of Taraka or Teraka or something like that - Giles promised he'd edit this in the end, so I'm not worried about it – Spike sent them after me because his mate, Drusilla, was weak, and the cure was this weird spell that had to do with her sire, which was Angel. So to get me out of the way, they sent these dudes to kill me. But while that was going on, a girl showed up in Sunnydale by the name of Kendra. No last name. Kinda stuck in the eighties, but whatever. See, when I temporarily died the year before at the Master's hand and Xander gave me CPR to bring me back, Kendra was called. So her watcher sent her to Sunnydale, and though we didn't totally get along – she was like mini-Giles, which is everything I'm not...

Anyway, she helped me save the day, meaning we stopped Spike and saved Angel – who she tried to have killed, not happy about that. No one messes with my boyfriend - and she went back to Jamaica. Well, when Angelus was running about, she came back. And Drusilla killed her. And I was blamed, because I was found leaning over her body. But no charges were pressed, if that's even a sentence.

Anyway, I told you that story to tell you about Faith. After Kendra died, Faith was called. And she's totally completely different than Kendra or I. She took way too much pleasure in the killing. But she was in town, and we took care of the dude who killed her watcher.

So, to recap. We've got two slayers in one small town, we've got one crazy ex-boyfriend, and we've got one dead boy that may or may not have been killed by our friendly werewolf. We ended up finding out it was some guy who was taking some magic potion or whatnot that turned him into Jekyll-Hyde type dude. He was jealous of people touching his girlfriend. So he was about ready to kill Oz, the werewolf, but it wasn't sunset yet, so after kicking Oz's ass, the sun set, and then it was an even match. The noise alerted us, and I tried to shoot either of them with the tranquilizer gun but got Giles instead…Faith went after Oz and 

I went after Pete, that's the kid's name. I found out he killed his girlfriend. And just as he was about to kick my ass, Angel shows up. He had broken the chains, and he came to my rescue. He wrapped the chains trailing from his wrists around Pete's neck and strangled him. Then he advanced on me in vampire face, and that was the second time I had ever been afraid of him. But then his face changed, and he spoke my name, and then he fell to his knees and embraced me, crying. I might have shed a few tears as well. I took him back to the mansion after that…

But the guy I was dating, the kid, Pete, and his girlfriend, Debbie, were Scott's friends. And I didn't know how to explain to him what happened, how to make things better for him. And that night I remember watching Angel sleep on the floor. He was twitching, and flinching, and it was obvious he was dreaming of his time in hell. I never asked him, but I didn't have to. I just knew.

He later told me that it was the first words he had said since coming back. He also told me, once he had recuperated from his years in hell- time moves differently in dimensions- that long after he had forgotten his own name, he remembered mine.

When he came back, he was an animal, he didn't understand where he was or even who he was. He would even at times shy away from me, afraid of me, his instincts telling him that I was a danger to him. But other times he would hold me and cry.

I kept Angel a secret. I know that wasn't the right thing to do, but at the time, it seemed to be. He didn't know who he was. I mean, the first time I saw him after he was back, he attacked me. The demon inside him deemed me a threat. So I had my boyfriend back, but he wasn't the same, and I wasn't sure if he ever would be, and we couldn't ever be together anyway, because we had both tasted heaven in each others arms and there was just too much temptation there.

You think this year has been bad so far? It's just the beginning. It keeps getting better. This was all before October.

So, October. Homecoming. I decided to go out for homecoming queen, since how else was I gonna be remembered in high school? As the girl who's always around when freaky things happen? But all my friends decided to help another candidate, so left me campaigning alone.

The short of the story was that my Homecoming was made memorable because some guy decided it would be a good idea to start something called Slayerfest 1998. While it was supposed to take out me and Faith, when I got into the limo for homecoming, the other candidate, my once friend, Cordelia, was there. Our friends thought it a good idea to get us to work out our differences. That found us running for our lives while people shot at us. I came up with something really nice, that I think I'm gonna pass on, because hey, it's the truth…let's see if I can remember it…

"I don't even get why you care about Homecoming when you're doing stuff like this," Cordelia said (or something like that).

"Because this is all I do. This is what my life is. You couldn't understand. I just thought... Homecoming Queen. I could pick up a yearbook someday and say, I was there. I went to high school, I had friends, and... for one moment, I got to live in the world. And there'd be proof. Proof that I was chosen for something other than this."

The moral of the story is, don't let slaying be all you do. You're not the only one, you can have a life. Because of what I went through, Giles is trying to change the way the Council deals with slayers. You guys don't have to be alone. Demons and darkness aren't taboo anymore. You can have friends that know. You can tell your parents. In fact, I suggest you tell your parents, and a few friends. You want to be careful who you tell, you don't want to be exploited, but if it weren't for my friends, I wouldn't have made it through that first year. I'm certain of that.

Slayerfest ended well. I killed the bad guys- well, most of them, Cordelia let two of them go, and neither of us were named Queen. Oh, and Scott dumped me, but Faith got him back pretty good in the end. And I found out a few years later he was gay. Of course that was after spreading rumors around that I was, but oh well. It was okay, because I was pretty hung up on Angel.

The year was very eventful. Let's see, one of Giles' old friends helped the mayor taint some band candy so all the adults became irresponsible so he could steal babies as a sacrifice to this demon in the sewer. I killed that icky snake dude and had to shower twice before I could get that smell off me.

I was still keeping Angel a secret, and it pretty much worked until middle of November. But I got caught, and I know it was wrong to keep him a secret, especially from Giles, whom I should have told, since Angel killed Giles' girlfriend. But I got caught. We were training, and I think I pinned him to the ground, and the next thing I knew was we were kissing. Xander caught us, anyway…

And then this woman came to Sunnydale, and she told us she was Faith's new watcher to get this glove of some-dude…Eighon or Nygon, maybe Myhnegon…oh well…Faith was going to kill Angel because Xander put the idea in her head, so I was fighting her, and the lady, Post, got the glove, and we almost died, but Angel saved us.

And the year doesn't end there! Believe me…Then Spike came back to Sunnydale because Dru dumped him, kidnapped Willow to do a love spell for him and took Xander for the hell of it, and he went to my mother and cried on her shoulder- didn't kill her, thank god – so Angel and I followed him to get Will and Xander and he convinced us that the 'just friends' thing we were doing wasn't going to work and would never work…I tried to force Angel to tell me he didn't love me anymore, it was the only way we could keep seeing each other, the temptation was too great, but he couldn't.

Then it was Christmas, and I was a guest star in Angel's wacky dreams, where he was remembering people he killed. I found out later that the First Evil (you'll find out more about him…her…it…later) was trying to convince Angel to lose himself in me, suck me dry and be evil. But he didn't. He decided that though he couldn't kill himself, and he couldn't convince me to kill him, he could stand still and wait for the sun to rise. I had to stop him, and I pleaded with him, and tried to convince him that strong is fighting, and it's hard, and it's everyday…but he wouldn't listen to me. And then it began to snow, instead of the sun coming up. And he was saved. And thankfully he took his miracle.

Let's see, what else happened that year? This demon, in the form of two children, convinced half the town that magic and stuff like that was evil, and I almost got burned at the stake…Faith turned evil and was working for the mayor for a while…she killed a man…tried to blame it on me…what else…

OH! Thank your lucky stars you never, ever have to go through with this. This is one of the first things Giles and I did away with. It's called Cru…something or other…um… Cruciamentum! That's what it was, knew I had it written down somewhere…it's where they take away your slayer strength and pit you against a vampire. It's supposed to be a controlled test. But my vampire, the one the Council chose for me, was crazy, and he got loose, killed his captors, and went after my mother. Giles, of course, told me the whole truth, because I'm like a daughter to him, and so he failed his part of the test. He told me I didn't have to go through with it, but the vampire had my mother, and I had no strength… so I went in…thank god the vampire was a drug addict, because I gave him holy water with his pills and he burned from the inside out…

But Giles was no longer my watcher. He had been fired.

So, recap - Faith was evil, Giles was no longer my watcher, and Angel and I were not dating. I convinced Angel to pretend to be evil to flush Faith out, since we thoguht she was evil, but didn't know know, and we needed to know know. It was the hardest thing for me to do, was to watch him kiss her as if he were evil…and then Willow's clone ended up in Sunnydale, well, not clone, but evil twin sister type deal. Vampire who was a little gay…

Then I tangled with these demons, and their blood got into my body, and I ended up with an aspect of the demon, meaning I was telepathic type deal, I could hear things people were thinking, and I was gonna go crazy, but I stopped a school shooting and a poisoning by the lunch lady…don't remember how I got rid of it, think it just kinda faded away…thank god, I don't want to be any weirder than I already am.

Okay, what else happened? The Council sent me my new watcher Wesley Windham-Price. Great guy, really stuffy. Angel broke up with me- that hurt like hell. Not that we were completely together in the first place…it was kinda confusing because after Christmas we just fell back into a relationship. Not like the kind we had before, but we spent time together, and I stayed at his place after patrolling. It wasn't the hot and heavy make out sessions or the glorious love making of our previous relationship, but I could have abstained for the rest of my life if I could have just fallen asleep each night in his arms.

But, yeah. He broke up with me in the sewer on patrol. Not gonna dwell on that one…He wanted me to have something outside demons and darkness, he wanted me to be able to have children and picnics and stuff like that, all stuff I hadn't really been missing. When I told Willow I felt like I couldn't breath without him in my life, that was the understatement of the year. Faith, still being evil, shot Angel with a poisoned arrow which the cure was slayer's blood. I tried to feed her to Angel but she got away, so I fed him myself. He almost drained me, made me feel- that's a little too personal, Buffy! And not something we want to go into - Trust me, I've had two other vampires bite me, first the Master my first year, and then you'll meet the other in a bit, and it's not fun. But with Angel…it was different. Anyway, he didn't drain me, I've still got the scar on my neck even though every other scar from all my years of being the slayer are gone.

And that night I quit the Council. Wesley wouldn't do anything to help Angel, so I quit. Faith was in a coma at the time- my doing- so Wesley was slayerless. So he eventually left.

Though we were broken up, Angel came to Prom to give me my one happy moment. Not perfect happiness-happy moment, just…dancing with my true love at Prom…and I also got a toy surprise! I was named Class Protector, and yes I memorized the speech, when a class 

as a whole tells you that they did notice you, you weren't just standing by in the shadows, then you remember stuff like that…

"We're not good friends. Most of us never found the time to get to know you, but that doesn't mean we haven't noticed you. We don't talk about it much, but it's no secret that Sunnydale High isn't really like other high schools. A lot of weird stuff happens here. But, whenever there was a problem or something creepy happened, you seemed to show up and stop it. Most of the people here have been saved by you, or helped by you at one time or another. We're proud to say that the Class of '99 has the lowest mortality rate of any graduating class in Sunnydale history. And we know at least part of that is because of you. So the senior class offers its thanks."

Okay, tears aside, the mayor was planning to ascend at Graduation. He had been alive for a couple decades, probably like 10, and so he wanted to become full demon. Well, we stopped him. Not until after he ascended, but oh well. His one weakness was Faith, so using some of her blood from a knife I had, I led him into the school, and we blew it sky high.

So, fire fighters came, police, but no blame was laid. And then, as he promised, he left. Angel, that is. He had said he'd stay for graduation, and then he was leaving. And he wasn't going to say goodbye. Truth be told, we've never said goodbye. Goodbye is too final for what we have.


	5. Chapter Four: Freshmen, all Over Again

Chapter Four: Freshmen, all over again.

That summer was one of the busiest of my life. Mostly because I didn't want to think about Angel. I put a real dent in the demon population that summer. Then summer ended, and I was on my way to UC Sunnydale…Those first few months were hard. My room mate, a demon. She listened to Celine Dion, dead give away. Oh, and her toenails grew after she had cut them…gross, huh? Then I met some vampires on campus that were preying on puny freshmen like me. That didn't go over well. Especially when they stole my stuff. I had gone home to see my Mom, then came back, found my stuff gone, and a nice note on my bare bed saying that college was too tough and I was done.

Giles wasn't any help either. He was happy being a gentleman of leisure (British for unemployed)- sorry Giles! So I went and found my stuff, and the vampires. The leader broke my Class Protector umbrella, and then I had to kick her ass. There was no way around it. Of course, once that was done, my friends decided to come to the rescue, including Giles, but the day was already saved. I got my stuff back, and there were a few less vampires running about.

Spike came back to town, found this nifty ring called the Gem Of Amara, pretty name, easy to remember. It makes the vampire wearing it impervious to harm…including sunlight. I did kick Spike's ass, got the ring from him and sent him packing. And then I sent the ring to Angel in LA, where I had learned he was doing his own demon ass kicking.

And here's where we have another confession. I said I would be truthful, mostly anyway, so here's a life lesson for you. Don't fall for a pretty face and a nice smile. I met this guy, Parker, and he was sweet. We did a few days of talking, and I thought I liked him, and him me. We went to a party, and we were getting along pretty well, so I went back to his place for the night. I woke up the next morning, and he was gone. De va ju. He did come back as I was trying to leave, promising to call me later. But he never did. Couple days later, I found him telling the same sweet story about his dead father to another pretty girl. Obviously I mistook a little fun for a serious commitment. His words, not mine. So, like I said, don't fall for it, it's the easiest way to get hurt.

Let's see…that year I met a fear demon, Gagnar or something like that. Some idiot frat kids decided that taking a diagram from an actual spell and drawing it on the floor of a haunted house was a good idea. Somewhere along the way, someone cut themselves or something, and the spell was left half complete. The spell to summon this fear demon. Made for one interesting party. Thank God he was like two inches tall, and I squished him. Left nasty gunk on my shoes, though…

That year I also learned the ills of alcohol- some pub owner put a spell on his beer that made the drinkers turn into cavemen. Fun times, coined such phrases as "beer foamy" and "where'd people go, bring people back." Like I said, fun. Don't drink in excess. I haven't since that day.

As a side note, Oz left my best friend, Willow, and she did a spell that made us do anything she wanted us to, so for a few hours I was engaged to the very same evil Spike- not a good thing…couldn't wash cigarette out of my mouth for days. Oh, that was possible, of course, because Spike was stupid enough to get caught by this government agency, the Initiative, and got a behavior modification chip put in his head.

We fought a shumash Indian spirit that Thanksgiving. Angel made a guest appearance but decided I didn't need to know. I, of course, went to LA and gave him a piece of my mind. I felt weird for a couple days after that, kept losing more time than I usually do, but I wouldn't realize why until later.

Oh, and then the Gentleman came to down. Great demons, steal the voices of everyone in town, then steal hearts. They needed seven. They got a few, the exact number I can't remember…but while defeating them, I learned that the guy I was interested in, Riley Finn, was actually in this Initiative group. Made things kinda awkward, him fighting demons and stuff for the government, me because it's my destiny. We tried to make it work for about a year, but it just didn't, because he was on drugs that made him strong, and I was naturally strong…Of course, he couldn't tell me at first what he did, but I could guess. He helped me defeat some demons that start with V- if you want real names, ask Giles, he knows- and the Sacrifice of three…

Anyway, the Gentleman's weakness is noise, or something like that, so I smashed the box they had stuffed all of our voices in, and I screamed. Their heads literally exploded.

That year Giles also got turned into a demon, almost got killed, but sadly enough I recognized his Buffy-face…he's the only person, except maybe my mother, who could be that annoyed with me.

Well, finally, I got to go and see what the Initiative was all about. But I asked just a few too many questions, and before I knew it, Prof Walsh was trying to get rid of me. And I guess they didn't like that I could take out whole squads at a time in very little time, with nothing but what I was born with…well, and what my destiny gave me…If I remember correctly, that first time, they took almost an hour to find me, and I kicked their asses in like half a minute…Then of course, Prof Walsh sent me into an ambush, and I only had a tiny bit of problem with the demons she hand picked to send after me…locked me in with them…sent me with a malfunctioning weapon…not that a slayer needs high tech weapons to get a job done. To tell the truth, those tasers felt a lot like cheating. She even told Riley that I was dead, which was a lie, because it takes more than one really big, muscular demon with a very sharp ax to kill a slayer. Later we realized I was getting a bit too close to this secret project of Walsh's, known as 314, or Adam.

Adam was part human, parts of demon, and part computer. He was supposed to be the perfect machine/soldier dude, but he was too smart. We ended up kicking his butt, but in the mean time, Riley was off his drugs that made him strong, and he went into withdrawal…of course, we didn't get to Adam in time before he turned my friends against me, including Giles. Also, Faith came back, stole my body, did the naughty with Riley, who couldn't tell it wasn't me, tried to kill my friends…we eventually switched back, and she got loose. I chased her to LA, found her in a too friendly position with Angel, got mad, then we were attacked, and then things get really confusing…Faith did turn herself in though, and she spent a good time in jail. I left LA in a huff, Angel followed me, had a run in with Riley, as well as some Initiative guys, Riley ran into Angel's fist - repeatedly…Vampires get jealous…Later, we- Riley and I – were possessed by kids that used to live in his dorm…under influence, we did the naughty quite a few times, still kinda felt like I was cheating on Angel even though we hadn't been dating for months…Oz came back, tried to get Willow back, but by then Willow was seeing a nice girl named Tara, and Oz got captured by the Initiative, we got him out, but then he left again…

To end the year off, we killed Adam, did this wicked spell that combined me and my friends, kicked his ass, and then the First Slayer possessed our dreams and tried to kill us in those dreams…of course, Giles swore that he told us, something about dire consequences, but if you've ever met the man, you know he says that about walking or chewing too fast…

So that was my freshman year in college. If yours is any less havocy, then thank your lucky stars!


	6. Chapter Five: Kid Sisters, Hell Gods

Chapter Five: Kid Sisters, Hell Gods, and Death

Sophomore year…not really sure what to say about it. Most of my life is so wacky that if you didn't live through it, you might not believe me.

Let's see, I fought Dracula. I mean the Count. He had actually heard of me, quite flattering actually. He owes Spike money, if I remember correctly. He tried to show me the darkness within myself, he got me under his thrall for awhile, but I'm made of stronger stuff than that to let something like that work on me all that often. I kicked his ass…are you seeing a pattern here? I meet a bad guy, I kick his ass. Don't see why I need to write this, there's not that much spectacular stuff about my life…

Mom got sick, she had a brain tumor. She had surgery and got attacked by this demon that was supposed to kill crazy people, because we were having an influx of the crazies. Do I have to say I killed it?

And I guess this is as good a point as any to introduce my sister, Dawn. At this point, she was like thirteen years old, and yet she wasn't. I also want to introduce the Big Bad of the year, Glorificus, aka, Glory. Hell god. She was the cause of all the crazies. And she was after Dawn.

To protect Dawn, as well as her privacy, I'm not going to tell you a lot about her, and you'll just have to deal with that. This group of monks made Dawn out of me. They were protecting this energy and had to make sure that the slayer would protect it, so they sent it to me in the form of a sister. They changed all of my memories, all of Giles' and Mom's and Willow's and Xander's and everyone's. As far as I'm concerned, Dawn isn't this mystical energy, she's my sister. She was born when I was six years old, and I promised Mom I would watch out for her, protect her. If anyone threatens her, they will have to go through me first. Got it? Good.

There was a ritual that called for Dawn's blood to open a portal to the dimension that Glory wanted to get to. She used to rule this hell dimension with two other gods, they got scared and kicked her out. And she's not the sanest person in the world. She actually feeds on the brains of humans, if I remember correctly. On earth, she shared a body with this cute nurse, Ben. But she didn't know she was looking for Dawn specifically, she just knew I had something that belonged to her.

A few weeks before Christmas, Riley left me. While Dracula was bugging me, he put me under his thrall that first and only time and I allowed him to bite me. I had also told Riley about the time that the Master had killed me by biting me. And Xander kinda told him about Angel. Of course, only Angel's bite scar is still there, but that's not on topic right now. Riley wanted to know what I felt when I had let these three vampires bite me. And I use the term "let" very loosely. I did not let Dracula or the Master bite me. I forced Angel to bite me.

But so, Riley was letting vampires bite him. And he got off on it. I found out and flipped out on him. It all came down to that since the disbanding of the Initiative, he wasn't as strong as he once was, he was now at human strength. And his tiny girlfriend could bench press…a Mazda, pretty much. He couldn't deal with the fact that I was stronger than him. So we fought, and he left me. I did try to go after him, but it didn't work. Now I thank God that I couldn't catch him. Angel left me for normal, and I thought Riley was as normal as I was going to be able to get. I should have known that nothing was going to work, because nothing could compare to what I had with Angel. He now has a nice wife, and he can pretend to be the big macho man, which makes him feel good about himself. Riley, that is.

Remember that I mentioned Mom had a brain tumor? Well, she died. And it was really hard on me and Dawn. I dropped out of college to raise my sister. She was still in middle school, and with Glory out there, I had to know she was safe.

Somewhere around this point, I went on a retreat type thing with Giles. Well, more like a quest, but not for the grail or anything like that. It was supposed to refocus me. I was worried that being the slayer was making me less human. I remember telling him that I wanted a break from the slaying. I could beat up the demons until the cows came home, and then I could beat up the cows, but as he pointed out, I had mastered so much, I was strong, resilient, all words describing stone. I never really connected with Riley as I had with Angel, and it wasn't just because of Mom's illness. I was shut down, aloof. That's why Riley left me, because he knew I couldn't love him. And all of a sudden, my mother was gone, and I was afraid she didn't know that I loved her more than anything. I was afraid that the slaying, the killing, it was making me hard on the inside. I was afraid that maybe being the perfect slayer meant being too hard to love. Just telling people that I loved them felt strange to me. And I thought that was wrong.

So we went on this quest thing, leaving Dawn with Willow and Tara, and there the First Slayer told me that Death is my gift. And it's not a gift I give to others. It's my gift, my reward for fighting the good fight. The fact that someday I was going to be able to lay down my sword and rest. We've changed this now, you don't have to wait until death to get your reward of being able to rest. But back then…sometimes, in the deep dark of night, it was something to look forward to. And maybe that makes me a bad person, but I had a lot of issues back then. I still do. Sometimes it seems like issues go with the whole slayer package; Faith had her own issues, and Kendra had hers. But back then, there was nobody but Giles I could talk to, and even he didn't always understand where I was coming from. Angel was the only one that ever understood me completely, accepted me for who I was, and didn't judge me.

But you're not alone. Never forget that. There are other slayers you can talk to, if you want, you can talk to me. I'm not the best with understanding and dealing with the issues, but you're not alone. There are therapists who have studied the problems and issues slayers go through for years. You always have someone to turn to, you are not alone.

But I only had one person I could tell everything to, and he had left me, and I was bottling everything up inside me. I had serious issues.

But back to the story...

Glory thought that Tara, Willow's girlfriend at the time, was this mystical energy because she was the new thing in my life. So she turned Tara crazy and Willow went after her, and with her magic, she actually hurt Glory, which was something I had yet to be able to manage to do. But crazy people can see what Dawn really is. And Glory found out. So we had to run. But Giles got hurt, and we needed a doctor, so I called in Ben. I didn't know what he was at that point. I didn't know that there were two entities sharing his body. So while he was tending Giles, he turned back into Glory, and she took Dawn.

At this time I broke down. I was pretty much catatonic. There had been a point a few weeks before that I had thought, just for a moment, that I wanted to quit. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was in the Magic Box, Giles' magic shop, putting a book away for him, nothing special. And then it hit me, I couldn't beat Glory. Glory would win. And it wasn't like I knew it, I felt it. Glory would beat me. She was a god, I was a human. And in that second of knowing, of feeling, I wanted it to happen, I wanted everything to be over. If Glory won, Dawn would die and I would grieve and people would feel sorry for me, but it would be over. No more running, no more hiding, it would be over. And in that instant, I couldn't help but think what a relief it would be.

When Glory took Dawn, I was off, just a fraction of a second, and that was why. And I honestly thought I had killed my sister. But it took Willow to snap me out of it. She used magic to go into my mind and draw me back out.

Well, the big day came, the day for the ritual. Glory had Dawn, she had everything she needed. And what did we have? Very little. But we went in with guns a-blazing, magic and troll God hammers and strange look alike robots – not going there – and we tried to stop Glory. But we couldn't. She was just too strong, and she had too many minions. I did stop Glory, but one of her followers had opened the portal. And as Giles had so eloquently told me, the portal would only close when the blood was stopped. When Dawn was dead.

He wanted me to kill my sister.

And though sometimes I wanted her dead, I would never kill her, I flatly refused. I apologized to my friends, because this opening of the portal would end the world, and though with the ending of the world, Dawn would die anyway, I vowed that the last thing she would see would be her sister fighting to save her life, protecting her.

But then something the monks had told me came back to me. The monks had made her out of me. Her blood was my blood. I hold her in my arms and I feel closer to her than…even now I can't explain it. So on top of that tower, because the portal opened up in the middle of the air, with the blood from cuts on her stomach running down her legs to drip into the portal, I told Dawn I loved her. And I told her to tell my friends that I loved them. I told her it was her job to take care of them. That they had to take care of each other. And I told her that the hardest thing to do in this world is to live. I wanted her to live, for me. Because I no longer wanted to. And then I jumped off that tower and into the portal.

And the blood stopped.

And the portal closed.

And I was welcomed into heaven by the open arms of my mother.


	7. Chapter Six: Cast Out of Heaven

Chapter Six: Cast out of Heaven

At first I hadn't wanted anyone knowing that I had died. I was afraid that the new generation of slayers wouldn't feel they could connect with me. I was afraid of the stares and whispers. You'll come to know that feeling well enough eventually. You can face down a nest of over ten vampires single handedly- well, you can't, and shouldn't even try it, but I grew up in different times – without an inkling of fear, but the thought of being different, of others staring at you fills you with dread. I didn't care if anyone knew what had happened between the Master and me. I was dead for all of five seconds. But this time…I had been dead for 144 days, almost five months.

But then somehow the story got out. Cough - Dawn - Cough. And I got the stares, I got the whispers. But instead of the younger slayers being afraid of me, of not being able to connect, they sought me out. I became a legend. A new girl got called, and before her first night was over, someone had told her about me. And the next day, she was looking for me, wanted to see me for herself. I don't know why, I didn't want this, maybe you can explain it to me sometime.

But anyway…

This is where the story gets dark. If you still think I'm an okay person, and you want to keep it like that, don't read this chapter. If you want to see just how human I really am, how imperfect I am, then keep on reading.

Like I said, I had been dead for five months. I had received my gift. I was in heaven, or at least I thought I was in heaven, and I was with my mother, and I was with my grandparents and I had met the others that went before me, slayers. Kendra and all the others. Even at that point, I was a legend. I had fought Kakistos or whatever and won. I had dispatched the Master. I had fought this ugly demon called Balthazar. I had quit the Council. I had fought a hell god. But more than anything, I had lived. I had been a slayer for over five years. I think only one other girl had been a slayer longer than I had, seven years. And I had my memories back…Not just those of before Dawn, but of the Day That Never Was…

I didn't tell you about that, did I? Thanksgiving of my freshman year, when I went to ream out Angel for being in my town, he got some Morah (Giles, check spelling?) blood into his system and it made him human. And we tried the mature plan, being in touch but not actually…you get the idea. That lasted for about two minutes, and then I was in his arms, and in his bed, where I belonged. He realized that he couldn't protect me as a human, so he had the day reversed, and only he was supposed to retain memories, but I was dead. All the pain I felt in my life was gone. It hurt that he had made me forget, it hurt that he had chosen being a vampire over being a human being, but I understood why. It didn't truly bother me, because I was dead. You don't feel emotions when you're dead like you do when you're alive. I knew that if I could feel, it would hurt, but all I could feel was peace.

It was like floating in the clouds, or being in a hot tub for hours and there's big handsome men massaging you, and you're totally relaxed and nothing bothers you, but your fingers don't get wrinkly...

The point is, I was happy in heaven.

But here on Earth, my friends weren't. They were worried about me. I had jumped into a portal to a demon dimension, so they thought I was in hell. So naturally, they brought me back. They ripped me out of heaven into the worst demon raid the hellmouth had seen in a long time. In essence, hell itself.

I guess I should explain. Spike fancied himself in love with me. So he had this guy make him a robot that looked exactly like me, sounded like me, it was creepy. My friends couldn't tell me apart from it, for God's sake. We, of course, confiscated this robot, and we don't think about what he had it made for. When I died, they didn't want word getting around that the slayer was dead, so Willow reprogrammed the thing, and they had the robot patrolling. Someone realized the slayer was a robot and the next thing the town knew, demon biker gang came to set up shop on the hellmouth.

Everything's kinda hazy, those first few days. I know I woke up in a box-my coffin. I'm still claustrophobic to this day. I had to dig myself out of my own grave. Not good for the fingernails. And I was in hell. That's really all I remember. I think I fought the demons, I think I sent them on their way, but I'm not sure.

Somehow Dawn found me; she took me home, cleaned me up. But I was so disoriented…I almost remember being back at the tower, of wondering if they would take me back if I were to jump again. But Dawn found me again, and she convinced me down from that tower. In the coming months there were a lot of times when I hated her for what she did, now I mostly thank her.

Those times were the worst in my life, that first year back. There was a demonic hitchhiker, Willow was using too much magic, there was this spell that made us lose our memories…It was worse getting those memories back than having them all along.

But then Spike confirmed my worst fears...I don't remember explaining this, and I can't really find it...The fourth year, Spike got captured by the Initiative, and got a behavior modification chip in his head. He was no longer able to hurt humans, though he could hurt demons. He was kinda on our side for awhile, fighting for us because he enjoys fighting. Well, I know I said earlier that he fancied himself in love with me, well, he was pestering me, and we kissed, once, it was a bad bad mistake, and I punched him, and then he punched me on instinct, and he didn't get hurt. The chip didn't work on me, it didn't see me as human.

I came back wrong.

But my friends were so happy to have me back and they just couldn't understand what I was going through. So I didn't tell them I was in heaven. And I pulled away from them. And though through it all, the inkling had always been there, I found myself dwelling more on more on the fact that I was different from my friends, sometimes I thought I was better, and sometimes I thought I didn't deserve them. But it put a barrier between me and my friends. It didn't help that the...satisfaction that I got from the slaying wasn't there anymore. Through the years, I had given up so much because I was the slayer, and I wrote it off because I was doing something good. Fighting the good fight. I was fighting evil, saving the world. But after coming back, that feeling of accomplishment was gone. The only reason why I patrolled, why I killed was because I knew it was expected of me; my friends expected it of me, Giles expected it of me, Dawn expected it of me; hell, even a small part of myself expected it of me. But whatever it was that made it meaningful and worthwhile before was gone. Maybe I just didn't care anymore.

And now the memories were painful, and confusing. Try having three sets of memories for the same day. It's not fun. That Thanksgiving weekend I remember spending it in Angel's bed, and I remember spending it with my father and his new girlfriend, and then at the same time, I remember that Dawn was with us. I guess the Powers That Be didn't think to separate the memories when my friends ripped me out of heaven. And the clarity I had in heaven alluded me. How could Angel choose fighting and demons and darkness over me? I had only dreamed about him being human only like a million times, and then he was, and he could have given me the "normal" life he thought I deserved, and he threw it all away because that stupid demon told him that he was just the first, and more demons were coming. And Angel couldn't protect me, and I would die. More demons are always coming! We fight until we can't fight any more, and then we fight some more, because we have to. That's the slayer way.

And I did die.

And then this demon came to Sunnydale, Sweet was his name, and he was a dancing demon. We were forced to sing what was on our minds, what was deep in our hearts, our secrets. So my friends found out I was in heaven.

And soon after that, Willow became obsessed with magic, Tara left her, Giles went back to England, and I started the most destructive relationship I have ever been in.

Sometimes when I think about this point in my life, I think I did it because Spike made me feel something, even if it was disgust. He had been around for over 150 years, he could coax an orgasm out of me no matter how unwilling I was. Part of me craved that physical release from everything. Other times I think I did it because he was undead. There was the danger, the cold body slowly warming from the heat of my own. And other times I think it was because on the good nights, I could pretend that it wasn't him, it was Angel, the love of my life, though he certainly didn't love me anymore. On the best nights, I felt nothing, but on the good nights, it was Angel. But I think the real reason behind it is the fact that I felt I didn't deserved to be love. I didn't deserve to be treated nicely, and Spike tended to be rough…I felt like I needed to be punished.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not telling you that having a relationship with a vampire is a good thing. It's the best way to get yourself killed. But things were different…they were different from any vampire you will ever meet. When they were good, whether if it was a soul or a chip, they were good. But when they were evil, they are more evil than you will ever meet. After I killed the Master, and Angel killed Darla, technically he became the Master of that vampire line. My one wish for you is that you NEVER have to meet a master vampire.

Back to the story, Buffy...

Or maybe it was because he called me by my "true" name; he called me Slayer. Because I wasn't Buffy Summers anymore. Buffy Summers had died twice to save the world. She had sacrificed her one true love, she had watched her friends suffer and die. And she had been in heaven, safe in her mother's arms, before being ripped out of them, and forced back into this hell where life was cold, and harsh and hard. Buffy Summers wanted nothing to do with living any more. It was the Slayer who was in control of my body those months. The Slayer who survived the best she could, because survival was all she knew.

I don't know when we became two separate creatures sharing one body. In high school, being the slayer was kinda like my after-school job, though I put in a lot more than the 20 hours a week the child-labor laws allowed. But somewhere along the line, Buffy Summers was the persona that was present during the day, and the Slayer came out at night while Buffy Summers took a nap.

And we floundered as we tried to make ends meet, and keep Dawn in school and out of trouble, and all the while, pretending to be happy so my friends didn't realize just how badly they had hurt me.

The relationship with Spike lasted for a few months. It might have lasted longer, but Riley came back, tracking a demon with his wife, and he showed me what Spike really was. It was like a slap in the face. Riley was the "normal" guy Angel had left me to find, and he was the epitome of the time where I wanted to be the most normal. And here he was, flaunting his wife in my face. Or at least that's what it felt like. But I had categorized him - Spike - in my mind as harmless, neutered. I trusted him to watch Dawn for me. But he was just as evil as before. He just had to find different ways to express it, had to find someone else to do his dirty work for him.

So I ended it. What I told him was the truth. Being with him was killing me. But more than that, it was preventing me from living. When I was in his arms, I didn't have to think about living, I didn't have to think about work or bills or Dawn or anything. In his arms, I didn't have to live.

But I couldn't live that way.

That was the year that Xander and Anya were to get married. Anya used to be a vengeance demon, and then she lost her powers and became a teenaged girl, and she and Xander fell in love. Well, one of the guys she cast vengeance on came to the wedding and planted seeds of doubt in Xander's mind, and so he left her at the alter.

And then…god, this is hard to go into even after all this time…Spike tried to rape me. And for those few minutes, I forgot I was the slayer. I was just a young woman, and I didn't know how to fight, I didn't know how to kill. I was Buffy Summers, Prom Princess, cheerleader; not the slayer. He attacked me in my bathroom, in my own house, and for weeks after I didn't feel safe in the one place that had been my sanctuary since…since Angel left. I fought him off…he failed, and he ran off. But the fear was still there.

Tara came back to Willow, and then this geeky guy, trying to kill me, shot Tara on accident and she died. And Willow went off the deep end. And I know this is her story to tell, but you need to understand part of it if you are to understand my actions. You don't have to agree, but try to understand...She had been obsessed with magic for awhile, and then she quit cold turkey. But the magic was still inside her.

I think it's partially my fault, I wasn't around when she was getting obsessed or quitting, I was too wrapped up in my own problems, and I was still somewhat angry at her from ripping me out of heaven. So I wasn't very supportive. I was her best friend, and I wasn't there for her when she needed me most. And she tried to use her magic to bring Tara back. When she couldn't, she decided on revenge. She let the magic consume her, she let the magic overtake her, and she killed Tara's murderer.

And then she tried to end the world. She could feel the suffering of every person on this planet - how, I'm not sure, but she did. She just wanted it to end. She turned on me, she turned on Giles and Anya and all of her friends, and she was going to use her magic to end the world, to end its suffering. Xander stopped her, but it was during this crisis that I realized that I wasn't living by my own advise. I had been more right than I thought. The hardest thing in this world is to live in it, but I wasn't living. I was missing out on my friends' lives, I was missing out on Dawn's life. She had grown up from an awkward preteen to a beautiful young lady, and I had missed it. I realized then that I wanted to be in my friends' lives again, I wanted to connect with them.

I forced myself to reconnect with my friends again, and Giles took Willow to England to get help.


	8. Chapter Seven: The First

Chapter Six: The First

The summer was a blur of patrolling and taking Dawn to the beach, and trying to be a better friend to Xander. We missed Willow and Giles so much, but we knew it was for the best. And then we found out that It was coming back. We had thought that we had ended its reign of terror years ago, but we were wrong. The town decided to rebuild Sunnydale High School, and before we knew it, the hellmouth was back in business.

And then we learned of the First Evil. And we learned of the Harbingers that were killing potential slayers and watchers. And we learned of the explosion at the Watcher's Council. And suddenly we had all these scared girls flocking to Sunnydale, thinking I could protect them. I was their last hope; they were young and frightened, and they didn't want to die.

So I housed them as best I could. And I tried to train them, to ready them for what was coming. Because something big was coming. I just knew it.

Around that time, Sunnydale High re-opened, and I had to send my sister there for classes. But the principal, Robin Wood, was the son of a slayer, and he knew who I was, and he gave me a job at the school. I'm not sure how helpful I was as a counselor to the kids, I don't remember having as many problems in high school as these kids did, but then I was fighting my own demons, both figuratively and literally.

A lot happened that year. Willow came back to Sunnydale under a spell that made us not be able to see her and she unable to see us. Andrew joined our little gang - at first he was a hostage, even though he was more pathetic than evil, but somewhere along the lines he became just one of the gang. We were put under a love spell, and I almost hurt my friends over this stupid boy. I met these vampires that time forgot that were stronger than any demon I had ever faced before. I learned what the first Watchers did to give the First Slayer her power, the power that now flows through your veins. I faced a crazy priest who was the First's right hand man. Spike got his soul, Anya became a demon again, and then she lost her powers, again. I got shrink-ed by one of my old classmates turned vampire. I learned that Spike, despite his soul and the chip, was being used by the First Evil.

And I'm sorry if this is all jumbled. That year was one of the longest of my life, and at the same time, it was the shortest. It was like a snowball, it started and it just kept rolling and rolling and getting bigger and bigger and going faster and faster until it rolled us up into it and you don't know what's up and what's down.

I remember telling the girls, right after the Ubervamp kicked my ass for the first time, "I'm beyond tired. I'm beyond scared. I'm standing on the mouth of Hell and it's going to swallow me whole...and it'll choke on me. We're not ready? THEY'RE not ready. They think we're gonna wait for the end to come, like we always do, I'm done waiting. They want an apocalypse? We'll give 'em one. Anyone else who wants to run do it now, because we just became an army. We just declared war. From now on we won't just face our worst fears, we will seek them out. We will find them and cut out their hearts, one by one, until the First shows itself for what it is. And I will kill it myself. There's only one thing on this earth more powerful than evil. And that's us."

I was harsh with the potentials, with my friends. It was so hard, all my life I had tried to belong, belong to anything, just something other than what I thought was a lousy destiny. And yet again there was something that was setting me apart. Willow was afraid to use her magic, and the potentials, they were all still just girls. I had the power, and they would have to wait for me to die before they might get the power. I once told them, after burying one of the potentials that committed suicide in my own house, "Anyone want to say a few words about Chloe? Let me. Chloe was an idiot. Chloe was stupid. She was weak. And anyone in a rush to be the next dead body I bury, it's easy. Just...think of Chloe, and do what she did. And I'll find room for you next to her and Annabelle. I'm the slayer. The one with the power. And the First has me using that power to dig our graves. I've been carrying you—all of you—too far, too long. Ride's over." Everyone was scared, and that's why they depended on me. I was the only one that wasn't holding back, Willow, Spike, they were afraid of their power, afraid of the guilt that came with doing what had to be done. But what about me? I was burying teenaged girls in my back yard. I was fighting for my life every night, and I still had to come home and play babysitter and nursemaid to one extremely powerful witch and a vampire. And what about the guilt I wasn't allowed to feel, didn't have time to feel, didn't have the energy to feel, didn't have the luxury to feel?

I led my "army" into hell itself - well, it was a vineyard, but we got our asses kicked, and Xander lost his eye. And then the potentials had a vote and Faith - who Angel's team in LA broke out of jail, and she came back to Sunnydale with Willow - was voted their new leader. Faith accused me of not knowing their names, not wanting to learn their names, and she was right. If I didn't know their names, then I wouldn't mourn them when they died. They wouldn't be a friend that died, they'd be just another casualty in the war for the world. I had told my friends "They're not all gonna make it. Some will die, and there's nothing I can do that will stop it." So they kicked me out of my own house.

Spike found me, and he tried to convince me to go back and take the lead from Faith, but I really didn't want to. For seven years, I had made the hard decisions, and my friends had followed them, had been behind me. But now, when I was doing what I always did, always had to do, they didn't trust me to keep them safe. I was setting myself apart because that's the only way to lead. I had to be reckless, and I couldn't take their feelings into consideration, because feelings can make you weak. Sometimes feelings are what set you apart from everything else, but sometimes they're just going to make you weak. Being the slayer made me different, and over the years, people tried to connect with me, and I thought I was trying to connect with them, but I was just brushing them aside.

Then I found the Scythe, which I'm sure you've heard of. It's pretty well-known by now. And I killed the crazy priest - Caleb - and I buried some of the potentials who weren't strong enough to make it - whether it was physically or emotionally, - and I tried to force maturity on young, scared girls. I had forgotten what it was like to be young and scared. I was now older, and scarred. And oh so tired. Tired and so alone...

I feel like I'm repeating myself and I'm probably not going in order…things are kinda muddled, everything happened so fast, and at the same time, it didn't. Giles, can you go through and put this in order maybe? Am I forgetting anything?

But I retrieved the scythe as Faith was leading the girls into a trap - not her fault, she was new at the whole leading thing. It was all very King Arthur-ish. It was clear Caleb and his Bringers had been trying to get it out of the stone for quite some time, and when I touched it, it slid out of the stone like the stone was butter or something. And it felt so right in my hands. When it was in my hands, I knew it belonged to me, was made for me. It fit like no stake or sword or crossbow ever had.

After I found the scythe, I asked Xander to kidnap Dawn for me. Even though I knew she was capable of taking care of herself, she was, and still is, my little sister. I knew most of us were going to die, and I didn't want her to be one of the dead. I didn't want Xander to die either. I had already cost him an eye, I didn't want to have his death on my hands either. If Willow died, I'd grieve, but she's a powerful witch, in some ways more powerful than I am; Xander….he's…he's the heart of the group, he's comic relief and …he's just Xander. He has his own unique powers, but it's not something you can quantify. He can't punch through a wall like it's air, or suck someone out of another dimension.

Once I knew that Xander had Dawn out of the way, I went to see what I could learn about the scythe. And this woman told me it was old - duh - and that it was made for the slayer - another duh - and then Caleb killed her and I had to kill him. Angel was there, and he brought me information, and an amulet, but I had to send him back to LA. I needed a second front. And I wasn't sure about my feelings for Spike - if I even had feelings for Spike, which I don't think I had - and I needed to be clearheaded and focused, and even after so many years, Angel still made the world disappear. He couldn't be there, I couldn't bear to watch him fall. So I made some really stupid analogy - cookie dough or something like that - and sent him back to LA.

That night I tried to sleep in Spike's arms, but it just didn't feel right. For many reasons. He wasn't Angel. He didn't make me feel what I wanted. I didn't feel protected in his arms, I just felt more alone than ever. And then the First Evil came to me and taunted me. Told me exactly what I already knew, that I was alone. I'd fight alone, and I'd die alone. But then it came to me, why? Why did I always have to be alone?

So I told my friends the plan, and they were surprised, and shocked, and a little bit afraid, but it just might work. So I prepared a speech, and I assembled the girls, and I let them have it.

"I hate this. I hate being here. I hate that you have to be here. I hate that there's evil, and that I was chosen to fight it. I wish, a whole lot of the time, that I hadn't been. I know a lot of you wish I hadn't been either. But this isn't about wishes. This is about choices. I believe we can beat this evil. Not when it comes, not when its army is ready, now. Tomorrow morning I'm opening the seal. I'm going down into the hellmouth, and I'm finishing this once and for all. Right now you're asking yourself, "what makes this different? What makes us anything more than a bunch of girls being picked off one by one?" It's true none of you have the power that Faith and I do. So here's the part where you make a choice.

"What if you could have that power...now? In every generation, one slayer is born... because a bunch of men who died thousands of years ago made up that rule. They were powerful men. [Willow]` is more powerful than all of them combined. So I say we change the rule. I say my power... should be our power.

"Tomorrow, Willow will use the essence of the scythe to change our destiny. From now on, every girl in the world who might be a slayer will be the slayer. Every girl who could have the power will have the power... can stand up, will stand up. Slayers... every one of us. Make your choice. Are you ready to be strong?"

And Willow did just that. She used the scythe to give all potential slayers the slayer power. And Spike used the amulet that was for a champion that was more than human, and we did it. People still died, Anya, Spike, a few slayers. Robin and I were seriously wounded, and we weren't the only ones. The entire town was cratered, thank God people had enough sense to run this time when the hellmouth got toothy.

But we won. Against all odds, we beat the First Evil and it's army of Ubervamps, and we closed the Sunnydale Hellmouth - we lost the entire town, but oh well - We won!

Up until that point, I wasn't sure we would.


End file.
